4 ms·

Removing the vote count was a step back. You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way to weigh the corrections made in replie

by latch 10y ago

Removing the vote count was a step back. You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way to weigh the corrections made in replies. If you saw that a comment had 20 votes, but a reply had 500, you'd have something to go by. If nothing else, they could show the relative score of a reply to its parent.

crispyambulance 10y ago
How about just reading and evaluating what the damn words say instead of relying on a "score"?
- latch 10y ago
  Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, where I don't have the necessary foundation. Because sometimes a comment reaffirms or conflicts with my evaluation and it's useful to have a weight assigned to that. Because the world has enough people who make their own evaluation and refuse to change their opinion regardless of overwhelming evidence.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, that I simply don't have the necessary foundation. And what makes you think that the "majority vote" on them will be correct? Most often, it's the majority that doesn't have the necessary foundation.
    - criddell 10y ago
      Well, if we had the vote counts, we could test your conjecture.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        We have them in other forums -- e.g. Reddit if I am not mistaken. Do they work that well there, or do they make the forums a competition for points and popular comments, in other words a popularity contest?
        tunap 10y ago
        WEB 2.0 turned online discussions into popularity contests. Period. I preferred the older, smaller communities sans likes & upvotes where you knew most in the community and had the ability to 'ignore' MUs. Of course, that had it's drawbacks and is much more difficult to scale as the site gains popularity & evolves. I do not have the answer other than self-moderation, yet, most(including myself) fail sometimes in the heat of emotional impulse... and personal investments, paid actors, other reasons.
        criddell 10y ago
        As sad as Slahdot is these days, I still think they have a superior moderation system. I like that every vote comes with a reason and that you can use that information to do things like filter out the jokes.
    - latch 10y ago
      It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information. There might be valid reasons to remove it (it hurts the community, it leads to negative behavior, .... I forget why they took it off). But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than less. Then you have the option to weigh it as you see fit, including ignoring it.
      - BeetleB 10y ago
        >It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information...But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than less. It could be an extra piece of disinformation, which can make it more difficult to evaluate. I suppose I'd like it if there was no way to sort. What happens on Reddit is that such comments easily bubble to the top, and they're often wrong, or just making a silly joke rather than being informative.
  - tttttttttttt 10y ago
    But points don't equal expertise. You can be an ignoramus in an echo chamber, or be the world expert who doesn't come here too often
- runeks 10y ago
  Some expressions cannot be evaluated without knowing what people think about them. The truth is not determined by popularity, except from the perspective of the person who chooses to believe in the falsehood. I think it's relevant, but not sufficient, to know what other people believe if you want to understand the world. Of course, the whole problem is that this reflects back on itself. Such that a highly upvoted comment will be upvoted by a person who values popularity too much, whereby he thus alters the very property he used to judge whether or not he should alter the property in the first place. So some people's over-reliance on popularity destroys the usefulness of the reading for everyone else. Classic observer effect.
- karakal 10y ago
  Not everyone have the time.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 10y ago
The vote counts weren't removed to make the comments more comprehensible or the threads easier to mentally rank. Their removal may very well have made those tasks harder. Vote counts were struck because they were causing fights. Paul Graham decided to risk sacrificing a little bit of comprehensibility in exchange for some extra civility. I think the tradeoff has worked very well --- especially because incivility crowds out comprehensibility anyways, so that almost anything you do to make a thread more civil will have the knock-on benefit of making it easier to read.
- angry_octet 10y ago
  It would be good if the vote counts became visible after a time period, say 7 days. That way when people re-visit a topic the most appreciated comments are visible.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    You can get the scores on old comments through search. Since, to a first approximation, the average 7 day old thread gets zero viewers, it seems unlikely to be worth the energy to add new features just for them. But if you think it's worth doing, you should mail Dan and Scott at hn@ycombinator.com.
frik 10y ago
This and the "karma" info on people's profile page - bring it back. Please also provide a new view that lists all top 20% of highest commented and highest voted news stories per day (disregarding any downvotes/flags !!). I really hate to miss stories that received a lot of traffic but got buried on page 200+ just because a vocal minority decided to hide it. Please let me vote on old comments. "Voting is closed on that comment, but you can add it to your favorites if you like." Why have you recently changed that?
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  > This and the "karma" info on people's profile page - bring it back. Your wish has been granted, you have a "karma: 4406" line
  - frik 10y ago
    I meant the karma ratio (or what it was called) that was on the profil page, a percentage value as far as I remember - ...maybe dang can explain it?
    - 3pt14159 10y ago
      Yeah, that had a major drawback: it discouraged helpful replies deep in the thread. I'm glad they removed it.
      - LukeShu 10y ago
        It was also buggy. On several occasions, I'd post a comment that got voted several points higher than my average, but the average went down; or vice-versa.
        B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
        It may have been a moving average of the last N items.
vlehto 10y ago
There is Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that has internet comments with two boxes: "agree/disagree" and "well argumented/poorly argumented". So far it seems to actually work. There are differences in the scores and lazy but popular comments get punished.

by latch 10y ago

crispyambulance 10y ago

How about just reading and evaluating what the damn words say instead of relying on a "score"?

latch 10y ago
Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, where I don't have the necessary foundation. Because sometimes a comment reaffirms or conflicts with my evaluation and it's useful to have a weight assigned to that. Because the world has enough people who make their own evaluation and refuse to change their opinion regardless of overwhelming evidence.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, that I simply don't have the necessary foundation. And what makes you think that the "majority vote" on them will be correct? Most often, it's the majority that doesn't have the necessary foundation.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Well, if we had the vote counts, we could test your conjecture.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      We have them in other forums -- e.g. Reddit if I am not mistaken. Do they work that well there, or do they make the forums a competition for points and popular comments, in other words a popularity contest?
      - tunap 10y ago
        WEB 2.0 turned online discussions into popularity contests. Period. I preferred the older, smaller communities sans likes & upvotes where you knew most in the community and had the ability to 'ignore' MUs. Of course, that had it's drawbacks and is much more difficult to scale as the site gains popularity & evolves. I do not have the answer other than self-moderation, yet, most(including myself) fail sometimes in the heat of emotional impulse... and personal investments, paid actors, other reasons.
        criddell 10y ago
        As sad as Slahdot is these days, I still think they have a superior moderation system. I like that every vote comes with a reason and that you can use that information to do things like filter out the jokes.
  - latch 10y ago
    It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information. There might be valid reasons to remove it (it hurts the community, it leads to negative behavior, .... I forget why they took it off). But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than less. Then you have the option to weigh it as you see fit, including ignoring it.
    - BeetleB 10y ago
      >It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information...But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than less. It could be an extra piece of disinformation, which can make it more difficult to evaluate. I suppose I'd like it if there was no way to sort. What happens on Reddit is that such comments easily bubble to the top, and they're often wrong, or just making a silly joke rather than being informative.
- tttttttttttt 10y ago
  But points don't equal expertise. You can be an ignoramus in an echo chamber, or be the world expert who doesn't come here too often
runeks 10y ago
Some expressions cannot be evaluated without knowing what people think about them. The truth is not determined by popularity, except from the perspective of the person who chooses to believe in the falsehood. I think it's relevant, but not sufficient, to know what other people believe if you want to understand the world. Of course, the whole problem is that this reflects back on itself. Such that a highly upvoted comment will be upvoted by a person who values popularity too much, whereby he thus alters the very property he used to judge whether or not he should alter the property in the first place. So some people's over-reliance on popularity destroys the usefulness of the reading for everyone else. Classic observer effect.
karakal 10y ago
Not everyone have the time.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 10y ago

The vote counts weren't removed to make the comments more comprehensible or the threads easier to mentally rank. Their removal may very well have made those tasks harder. Vote counts were struck because they were causing fights. Paul Graham decided to risk sacrificing a little bit of comprehensibility in exchange for some extra civility. I think the tradeoff has worked very well --- especially because incivility crowds out comprehensibility anyways, so that almost anything you do to make a thread more civil will have the knock-on benefit of making it easier to read.

angry_octet 10y ago
It would be good if the vote counts became visible after a time period, say 7 days. That way when people re-visit a topic the most appreciated comments are visible.
- tptacek 10y ago
  You can get the scores on old comments through search. Since, to a first approximation, the average 7 day old thread gets zero viewers, it seems unlikely to be worth the energy to add new features just for them. But if you think it's worth doing, you should mail Dan and Scott at hn@ycombinator.com.

frik 10y ago

This and the "karma" info on people's profile page - bring it back. Please also provide a new view that lists all top 20% of highest commented and highest voted news stories per day (disregarding any downvotes/flags !!). I really hate to miss stories that received a lot of traffic but got buried on page 200+ just because a vocal minority decided to hide it. Please let me vote on old comments. "Voting is closed on that comment, but you can add it to your favorites if you like." Why have you recently changed that?

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
> This and the "karma" info on people's profile page - bring it back. Your wish has been granted, you have a "karma: 4406" line
- frik 10y ago
  I meant the karma ratio (or what it was called) that was on the profil page, a percentage value as far as I remember - ...maybe dang can explain it?
  - 3pt14159 10y ago
    Yeah, that had a major drawback: it discouraged helpful replies deep in the thread. I'm glad they removed it.
    - LukeShu 10y ago
      It was also buggy. On several occasions, I'd post a comment that got voted several points higher than my average, but the average went down; or vice-versa.
      - B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
        It may have been a moving average of the last N items.

vlehto 10y ago

There is Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that has internet comments with two boxes: "agree/disagree" and "well argumented/poorly argumented". So far it seems to actually work. There are differences in the scores and lazy but popular comments get punished.